Another awesome weekend around the Hipster Pad, another beginning-of-month slump in energy levels. Sigh!

Friday afternoon, Marie got Falcons tickets and a parking pass from one of her bosses, and so she rushed over and we made tracks for the Georgia Dome. I've actually only been to the Dome once before, when foldedsoup took me to see a Hawks-Bulls game that they held there in order to sell more seats to people who wanted to see Michael Jordan in action. Anyway, we parked in that "Gulch" underneath Philips and the Dome and walked for what seemed like forever - the seats were on the far side of the Dome as well! - and missed the first few plays. This was a preseason game hosting the Ravens - we won 13-10 - and the Dome was not quite 2/3 full. We left at the start of the fourth quarter since everyone was hungry and the kids were completely spent and we wanted to try and avoid some of the traffic, and had a late dinner at the Varsity.

Marie's first Football Widow Weekend went pretty well overall, considering she wants to participate and enjoy it with us, and not, as she put it, retreat to the kitchen to cook nachos and serve beer. Saturday afternoon, the kids monopolized her time and the four of us played Heroclix, and a little before 6 we went down to the Taco Stand to watch the tail end of Tech's domination of Notre Dame, and marvelled at the Appalachian State upset of Michigan, before Georgia-Oklahoma State started. Great game! This was an HD feed which was running a couple of seconds behind the real world, so we couldn't hear Munson call it, so, I again decided to leave in the fourth quarter, this time so we could hear a little of Larry's play-calling.

Marie left Sunday morning and I honestly don't remember much about that day... I know I took two naps and I made some lunch or something. I know we did some grocery shopping in the evening. We also played a fun Heroclix game that didn't go so well for the kids, as I sent a Brotherhood of Mutants team against them. Heh, that was fun.

Monday morning, the Hipster Son finally got me to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which wasn't as good as the third movie, but better than the first two. I liked the character comedy bits between the first trial and the second, and I liked Moaning Myrtle, and I liked spotting actors from Doctor Who (Shirley Henderson, Roger Lloyd Pack, David Tennant), but I think the massive scope that Mike Newell went for must surely have worked against Rowling's intention. Consider the size of that Bonaroo-type campground in the beginning, and the unbelievably gigantic Quidditch World Cup stadium, which is like those giant soccer arenas in Brazil and Argentina... it felt like wizards were no longer a secret, hidden minority, but rather one of the most populous groups on the planet. And then to tell me that the many hundreds, if not thousands, of campers at this place were not able to defend themselves against the seven or eight hooded henchmen of Voldemort, when every last one of them has magical superpowers and outnumber their attackers better than a hundred to one...

I don't think Newell even explained what the heck they were doing there. I imagine they might have been looking for Harry, which suggests the whole Tri-Wizard Challenge thing was actually "Plan B." And there we must be baffled by the original story, because not only is this the third time where Voldemort's men have an evil scheme which takes an entire academic year to come to fruition, this time all they needed to do was have Harry stay after class one day and say "Oh, pass me that potion, would you?" and slip a portkey in place of the flask and they'd have him in the graveyard immediately, without risking him being eaten by a Hungarian superdragon, falling to his death, drowning or being eaten by a shrubbery before then. Their cunning plan would be a bit screwed if he ended up mermaid food at the bottom of Black Lake, wouldn't it? The villains are completely fucking retarded, and they only get away with it because the heroes aren't much more clever at all, and the protagonists (principally Dumbledore and the man from the ministry) who have valuable information withhold it from the audience under the guise of "protecting Harry."

The thing that genuinely frustrates me about Harry Potter is that, despite the genuine pleasure in watching all of the very good actors in these films - Ralph Fiennes is not among their number; he's like a bad pantomime, moustache-twirling baddie among all the other talents, old and young - seeing these movies is seeing, without effort, the most utterly gigantic plot holes in fiction. Newell may be at fault for not crafting a film that really felt like it happened over the course of a school term, but the brain-dead plot is Rowling's alone. How something so relentlessly mediocre enthralls so many is simply beyond me.

Surprisingly, I didn't take a nap after that.

Anyway, we played some Perfect Dark and I made nachos and the kids played with some friends, and people came over and we played some more Perfect Dark and watched Firefly and now I've got a very, very busy month ahead of me. One trip to the beach and one big convention and lots of out of town buddies and a visit from the Hipster Nephew and his parents and a new PJ Harvey album... and only 19 business days in the month to get 2875 things done... wheeee!